DaysAtDunrovin 2020 Thanksgiving Survey

Thanksgiving is one of the most important American holidays that generally involves gathering family and friends to share a meal, celebrate our bonds, and give thanks for our blessings. The need to maintain physical separation this year to combat the spread of Covid-19 is causing many people to alter their Thanksgiving celebrations. This survey is an opportunity for all of us in the DaysAtDunrovin community to share our memories of Thanksgivings past and our plans for this year's celebration. Even if we can't be together physically we can certainly connect spiritually.

Dunrovin Ranch owner, SuzAnne Miller, will provide her answer to each question in the hope of priming YOUR storytelling pump and encouraging you to write down your thoughts. Your responses are anonymous. We have now way to connect you personally with your responses. SuzAnne will present a summary of survey responses during the Monday Social following Thanksgiving on November 30, 2020.

Question Title

* 1. What Thanksgiving memories stand out for you from your childhood?

SUZANNE'S RESPONSE: My family lived in Butte, Montana, where it was always cold at Thanksgiving. Mother loved to make a big Thanksgiving dinner and invite relatives and friends to join us. That meant a BIG turkey with all of the trimmings. The problem was that our refrigerator was too small to hold all of the leftovers. So, my mother turned to using the back porch as a second winter refrigerator. The porch was enclosed, with very low heat. so the temperature there hovered just above freezing. It was the perfect place to temporarily store food. Dad had constructed a counter and shelves specifically for that purpose. I always relished eating my mother's dressing (stuffing) cold and I would often sneak out to the porch in the middle of the night after holiday dinners to treat myself to cold stuffing. On more than one occasion, I encountered my father there doing the same thing. I can still hear and see us quietly laughing together during our midnight raids on the porch pantry.

Question Title

* 2. Do you have any objects such as dishes, decorations, tablecloths, or other items that you have saved from your childhood and that mean “Thanksgiving” to you?

SUZANNE'S RESPONSE: I have saved the big graniteware turkey roaster that my mother always used at Thanksgiving and Christmas. It always brings a smile to me to take it down from storage and think of my mother while I am cooking a traditional turkey meal. I hope that one of my sons will want to keep it and use it.

Question Title

* 3. As an adult, what are your established Thanksgiving traditions? Where do you generally gather and with whom? What is generally served and who does the cooking? What activities do you include in your celebration?

SUZANNE'S RESPONSE: My husband and I developed our family holiday traditions while living in Alaska where few people had relatives close by. Winter travel to and from Alaska from the lower 48 was difficult and expensive, so most of our friends stayed in Alaska for the holidays, and few of our relatives ever made the arduous trip to join us. This made friends into family for the holidays. Early in our marriage, we had a huge table that could comfortably seat 14 (and 16+ with a little squeezing!) Hence, Thanksgiving dinners were nearly always at our house. We would cook the turkey and others would bring the side dishes and desserts. This tradition has been upheld throughout the years. When we returned to Montana to care for my parents, we kept the tradition going by combining friends and family. Sometimes we needed several tables to accommodate the crowd.

We always took a Thanksgiving day walk before dinner and played party games afterwards. We had some incredibly fun times when our college-aged sons brought home foreign students who joined in our silly parlor games.

Question Title

* 4. Tell us about any unusual circumstances that made previous Thanksgiving celebrations memorable?

SUZANNE'S RESPONSE: Two unusual Thanksgiving celebrations stand out in my mind. When I was in the fifth grade, my parents bought a new house and somehow, we ended up moving on Thanksgiving weekend. I remember feeling "put out" about the whole thing. I hated leaving my old neighborhood, I hated using my vacation time to do all the work of moving, and I hated missing out on our usual Thanksgiving traditions. I was a pill. On the actual Thanksgiving Day, my family piled into the car looking for a restaurant that was open for Thanksgiving dinner. Now this was in the late 50's before 24 hour service was a thing. We ended up at a truck stop some 20 miles west of Butte eating along with a group of truckers who were on the road. This was the first time that I personally realized that there were lots of working people who had to be away from home during holidays. The owners of the café made it a very festive atmosphere with family seating for everyone and we had a great time. I lost my bad attitude and learned some important lessons from that night.

My second unusual Thanksgiving happened in 1978. Early in the year, Sterling moved to Alaska to try to get me to remarry him. His charms worked! I was still living in Kodiak and he was living in Anchorage. We had a couple of friends from graduate school who had just moved to Anchorage and they agreed to host a Thanksgiving dinner with us and other friends. Without telling people beforehand, Sterling and I had arranged for a quiet church wedding late in the day. So we literally pushed ourselves back from the table, and invited everyone to the church so we could get remarried. Neither of us remember the actual date; we just remember it was Thanksgiving!

Question Title

* 5. How are you planning to celebrate Thanksgiving this year in face of the Covid-19 pandemic?

SUZANNE'S RESPONSE: Since both Sterling and I are of a certain age and have underlying health conditions that make us very vulnerable to Covid, we will not host an indoor Thanksgiving celebration this year. Rather, we have purchased some electric lap blankets and will gather outside (with electrical extension cords for our blankets!) around a fire pit situated off of our back deck. Sterling and I will cook up lots of hearty turkey stew that we can share with our two sons and our onsite Dunrovin crew as we sit around the fire with appropriate distance between us. We will, of course, continue with our tradition of a walk before dinner and parlor games after.

Question Title

* 6. The Donkey DIVAS, Miss Gertie and Miss Maude, want to know if you will be serving a Thanksgiving Day dessert to their liking and if so, what time should they arrive to crash your celebration?

SUZANNE'S RESPONSE: I don't know how this question got added to the survey, but I think you best be careful with your answer. These girls have been know to take charge and travel great distances to satisfy their sweet tooths!